IN THE BEGINNING…

(Future posts will take place on our new site, http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-tough , we apologize for selling our soul for rock and roll. There will be a ping to that site in a couple days. Here is our first post at the new digs.)

Those three old white anglo-saxon protestant men must be rolling in their collective graves.

On June 10th, 1847, James Kelly, John E. Wheeler, and Joseph K.C. Forrest published their first edition of the Chicago Tribune. It was to be a daily periodical filled with the happenings of the newly-formed country’s second city.

Hello. I'm white. I own people. Please don't tell me you are a Catholic immigrant.

The early editors of the Tribune embraced popular non-nativist and anti-Catholic sentiments. Comments in early Tribune articles denounced the city’s new settlers; primarly Italians, Irish, and Polish.

Owners from Medill to McCormick would continue to hold onto these reactionary policies for years to come. The paper held an extremely conservative base, and its circulation reflected the growing disdain towards a city infested with immigrants. It was pro-Temperance. It was very Protestant.

163 years later, a descendant of Polish and Irish Catholic immigrants is sitting at his computer; pounding the keys on a Tribune backed website. The man is extrememely coarse, vulgar, and crude. He also doesn’t view anything as sacred.

He was never pro-temperance (just ask my buddies from college). He was raised Catholic, and he is unapologetically independent in political belief.

My ancestors fought for something when they settled in Chicago. It was something they couldn’t find in Ireland or Poland; comfort. Basic, soothing, easy…comfort. They dealt with the outlash from the owners of the Tribune, and the people who supported it. The flag wavers and Know Nothings, the Whigs, and the Republicans. Through all of the unwelcomed remarks, they stayed.

They had a basic American want, and they weren’t going to let anybody take that yearning for a basic/free/comfortable life from them. It is because of them that I’m even able to sit here and type about ridiculous sporting events (or about sporting events that I’m inventing for comedic purposes).

Which brings me, finally, to this web site.

Chicago Tough is a website designed to make you laugh. It isn’t meant to be taken seriously. We will go to any lengths to make you chuckle, chortle, or straight-up puke. We don’t apologize for anything, and we certainly aren’t going to send out press releases stating the same.

Over the next months you will receive daily updates on the ridiculousness of daily sporting events. We hope to make you laugh. We hope you get slightly offended, too. What would comedy be without trying to push the envelope a little bit, eh?

We know that’s exactly what those three white anglo-saxon protestant men would’ve wanted.